Charles Barkley applauds ESPN leaving ‘Inside the NBA’ alone

After nearly a year of worry over how Inside the NBA would look and sound on ESPN, Charles Barkley endured the debut long enough to realize everything is going to be okay.

Barkley joined The Dan Patrick Show on Friday morning to discuss the beginning of the basketball season, but more importantly, to discuss the beginning of Inside the NBA’s partnership with ESPN. During the interview, Patrick asked whether Barkley changed his approach on ESPN compared to when they were on TNT.

“No, it’s been great,” Barkley admitted. “I said this, and I wasn’t kissing anybody’s ass. You know I ain’t gonna kiss nobody’s ass. That’s the best thing about having money, is I don’t have to listen to anybody. It’s an honor and a privilege to work for ESPN because every kid grew up wanting to be on ESPN, they did…so it’s an honor to work for them. And we only did three shows, and they’ve been great. They’ve left us alone.”

Despite concerns about how the partnership would work, ESPN insisted they wouldn’t meddle with Inside the NBA, leaving TNT Sports to maintain production and editorial control of the show. The only difference was going to be the night and the channel it airs on. But Barkley, and many others, were still proceeding with caution, taking a ‘believe it when I see it’ approach to Inside the NBA’s licensing agreement with ESPN.

After three shows, ESPN was right and everyone who doubted them was wrong. Inside the NBA’s first three shows on ESPN were almost perfect. But as Barkley later explained, the only disrupter wasn’t ESPN’s fault.

“The only thing that’s sucked about it is in game one on NBC, we had a great double overtime game, then the next night we had Wemby (Victor Wembanyama) go crazy, we had Steph (Stephen Curry) go crazy for us, and we didn’t even get to talk about that because of that gambling BS,” Barkley ranted, “That was the only downer, but other than that, it’s been fantastic.”

Studio shows on ESPN were put in a tough spot last week when news broke about the FBI’s illegal sports gambling probe, leading to the arrests of Chauncey Billups, Damon Jones, and Terry Rozier. The bombshell news had sports entertainers like Stephen A. Smith and Charles Barkley breaking down legal issues that probably should have included experts to provide concrete information rather than performative commentary. But even a federal gambling probe wasn’t enough to keep basketball fans from expressing a sigh of relief at ESPN leaving Inside the NBA alone.